Viewpoint

“From 2006 to 2012, roughly 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills crisscrossed America. What the opioid crisis illustrates is not that there are a few bad apples in the pharmaceutical industry, but that the country’s entire health-care system is driven by profit at the expense of public health and safety. Drug manufacturers, pharmacy chains, drug distributors, and insurance companies got rich while people, especially people lower down the income ladder, suffered—and the Drug Enforcement Administration, through neglect or incompetence or a mix of both, watched it all happen.”